Junco Coot: Main character of I Am Just Junco series
Age: 19
Profession: Assassin for Rural Republic Defense
Hobbies: Piano, mounted aerial acrobatics, collecting guns and books
It’s the piano that trips up all her clients. “Piano?” They ask. “An assassin that plays the piano?”
Yeah, what’s wrong with playing the piano? Even badass Junco can’t be badass all the time. That’s not cool, that’s boring.
Junco has many talents and yes, most of them are tied up in the various methods she uses to complete her jobs. She’s a hell of a knife thrower (I taught her that, thank you very much), she can shoot with amazing accuracy from long distances, and she can land a tornado kick on the chin of a guy three times her size.
But only her skill at the piano was enough to stun a room full of wanna-be warriors into silence on the eve of a death-match fight. The piano is a skill she relies on to keep her grounded and the beauty of the music is in sharp contrast to the roughness of the girl.
Everyone needs a hobby but Junco really needs her hobbies. It keeps her human even as her handlers draw out every last bit of humanity inside her to make her as immune to death and destruction as any one person can get.
There are no piano scenes in Clutch, Junco is too busy trying to find her way back from insanity and there aren’t any piano opportunities in caves and tunnels! But in Fledge she plays the piano twice, the first time is after Fight Six, when the pledges are at 039 for the party. And the second is when she devises her Deliverance plan as she plays Asgarth’s Genius.
But in Flight we get a very intimate look at just how much piano playing has kept Junco sane over the years and we figure out pretty quick, she’s quite the little musician when she plucks out the Inanna tune from her trip to the nargala with Kadian.
The piano scenes in Flight reveal Junco’s inner character and they also show that her worth is not only tied up in her skills as a killer. There’s more to her than that. She needs this hobby, she needs to know this about herself – because if she can’t recognize the good inside her, how will she ever stop killing?
Maybe she won’t, but I can hope that she’ll find happiness in the end, can’t I?
Gideon